Breeze Spirometer – Digital Health Working Demo

A convincing working digital health prototype designed to demo a concept for respiratory disease monitoring.

In today’s world of ever-growing digital health products – including drug delivery or connected monitoring devices for chronic disease – there’s often a need to demonstrate not just the digital, but the digital as “married” to the physical product – and at the earliest conceptual stage. Compounding the challenge, it’s not always easy to get a multidisciplinary team to quickly grasp a new digital health concept. PowerPoint slides can be so lifeless.

At Bridge, we’ve come up with a more effective approach. We place a working prototype – demonstrated in a minute or less – right into team members’ hands. They usually “get” the idea right away as the concept “comes to life.” And that helps immensely when they weigh choices moving forward. As one Bridge client recently said: “Our challenge is demo or die.”

The Breeze Spirometer is a convincing working prototype demonstrating a concept for a sophisticated digital product (see video below). Such a product could be used in the monitoring and managing of various respiratory diseases. It might be a stand-alone device or part of an ecosystem connected to apps and web apps via a smartphone app and the “cloud.” The device offers a simple and intuitive way for patients to measure their breath performance and then potentially share that information with health care providers.

Concept and Inspiration

UI based around the metaphor of blowing a dandelion

Process and Development

Designing the Spirometer involved integration of Bridge’s industrial design, user interface and a prototyping electronics platform. The device contains several main components: a pressure sensor, an Arduino electronics prototyping platform, and an OLED screen. As a patient blows into the mouthpiece, the device measures the strength of his or her breath and displays the results through a poetically engaging dandelion animation.

Using the Arduino platform allowed Bridge to build and program a simple electronic system very quickly. It provided a way to interpret the readings coming from the pressure sensor and display unique animations according to the data. The Arduino platform can also send that data to a mobile demo app via Bluetooth. In addition, the Spirometer is completely self-contained, and even has its own battery, charged through a standard USB port. This makes it a truly portable demo, shareable anywhere and anytime with colleagues. The project took three weeks from concept to working demo to complete. This approach offers a cost-effective way to inspire product development and commercial teams.

Drop us a quick note at info@bridgedesign.com if you’d like to explore how Bridge can help with a digital healthcare demo for your area of medical interest.